Things I Do

An old make that got lost in backstage of my website. A suit of scale mail armour made out of pennies drilled in a hexagonal pattern. Made over a period of three years. If I were to make one these days I'd get access to a laser cutter and make a jig to hold pennies in set locations. As it was I used a drill press and it took a very long time.

September 2008

Rather than writing about this I will instead direct you to an article by an awesome person I know who champions virtual and enhanced reality art. Full screen the video and turn up the volume. http://npirl.blogspot.com/2008/09/most-complex-sculpture-in-any-world.html

September 2008

A flower made from brass and wood. Made as a wedding present for my cousin Siofra out of materials left over from the Blunderbow.

June 2005

A sculpture created in Second Life. It is comprised entirely of tori arranged in a circle and rotated in a wave around the circle. Through pictures is really not the way to view the work. To really get a feel for it you have to be seeing it in 3D space.

May 2005

A lifesize human figure made in 5mm iron rods, holding a candle. I used to weld garden sculptures for a guy called Alex Rocke. We had a load of iron rods left over from a cancelled order and let me have a play with them. Ended up selling this piece through a local gallery (in Malmesbury) for £1200, which was nice.

August 2004

Two complete suits of authentic Gothic battle harness made entirely from transparent materials. Made for the final show of my fine art degree at Sheffield Hallam, a collaboration with Joe Laverack who now runs White Rose Forge.

January 2003

A dense sphere made from pins soldered together. Created as a wedding present for my cousin Ben. Displayed in an old scientific apparatus box.

January 2003

A structure made from clothes pegs taken apart, glued back to back then re-assembled. Very simple but it pleases me greatly.

January 2003

A sphere made from pencils super glued together. The pencils are in four alignments, as you would get on a caltrop or the molecular structure of diamond. I originally tried out this structure with straws, seeing the holes for each rod were hexagonal it seemed obvious to use pencils. after enough pencils were stuck together a disk sander was used to get it spherical. It looked more interesting before I sanded it, though the pencils left a beautiful rainbow on the disk sander.

June 2001

Made with roughly 10,000 split ring washers anodised in 5 different colours. The image of Einstein was converted into a diamond shaped pixellation to suit chain mail structure. Made as the final piece of my art foundation course at Manchester Metropolitan University. It took a long time.

September 2000

A Heart made from pins soldered together. The classic image of a heart recurs in my work. Very cheesy, but hey, love is pretty cheesy if you think about it.

September 2000

Three circles depicting a sphere. Made from U-shaped tacks soldered together. Very quick and just a sketch really but I really like the result.

September 2000

A Klein Bottle is a closed non-orientable surface that cannot be embedded in three dimensional space without self intersection. Just look at the Wikipedia page. Made using the same technique as the Pin Balloon, except a modelling balloon was used for the neck and clay was used for the joins between the neck and body.

Pin Balloon

September 2000

A hot air balloon created out of pins soldered together, with a lead radio isotope container for the basket. Pins were stuck into the papier mache of a regular balloon, soldered then the papier mache was cut away. Created as the entry piece for the Art Foundation course at Manchester Metropolitan University. The brief was to create a mode of transport out of a material which is it's antithesis. Pins are not really the antithesis of a hot air balloon but it seemed right, so I did it.